Suspiciously Specific #17: Liminal Spaces
- The Fiction Fox
- 7 days ago
- 9 min read
My Suspiciously Specific Series came into life as a way for me to explore and examine highly (often very specific) microtropes or trends I’ve been loving within my reading lately. A love for novels set in liminal spaces has been on the list of microtropes that I wanted to cover for a long time. Inspired by the trailer of a soon to be released movie, The Backrooms, that is soon to spark broader interest in the topic, I decided that today was the day to tackle this one.
For those unaware of the phenomenon entirely; the idea of liminal spaces refers to a specific feeling that some locations give off, that is somewhere between eerie, alien, dreamlike, threatening and nostalgic at the same time. They are typically empty of life or abandoned, and yet the setting itself makes them feel alive in a way. Another hallmark of the Liminal space is the fact that they are often transitional in a way: a hallway, a train station, or even a landscape still in a process of transition. See the Wikipedia-entry here.
In this list you’ll find 22 novels, featuring a wide variety of liminal spaces; from the urban to the natural, and the eerie to the comforting.
Houses and Strange Architecture
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski | Goodreads
Genre: horror, ergotic literature, mixed media. Pagecount: 709 pages The Liminal Space: a maddening house that defies every rule of architecture and reason. Synopsis: A puzzle/matryoshka doll/ergotic mixed-media-work of fiction, in which the lives of multiple characters become unhinged by their investigation and subsequent obsession with a mysterious house that’s – impossibly – larger on the inside than it is on the outside.
We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer
Genre: horror
Pagecount: 312 pages
The Liminal Space: a seemingly ordinary house that can’t shake the feeling of something being off.
Synopsis: newly moved into their first shared home, queer couple Eve and Charlie receive a strange visit at night during an impending thunderstorm; a family rings their doorbell, claiming to have been the previous inhabitants of the home. "Could they maybe have a look inside, for old times’ sake…?"
The Renovation by Kenan Orhan
Genre: magical realism
Pagecount: 240 pages
The Liminal Space: a bathroom that contains a geographically impossible Turkish prison-cell.
Synopsis: A woman discovers that her bathroom has been remodeled into a traditional Turkish prison cell. Through short trips into this strange parallel prison, we explore themes of caregiving, exile, grief, memory, and migration.
Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix
Genre: horror with some comedy elements, mixed media (novel is formatted partially like an IKEA-catalogue)
Pagecount: 248 pages
The Liminal Space: an empty budget-furniture store at night.
Synopsis: a crew of minimum wage employees is tasked to stay overnight in an empty ORSK-store (heavily IKEA-coded, without violating copyrights…) to investigate signs that the store might be haunted.
Solace House by Will MacLean
Genre: mystery/horror
Pagecount: 519 pages
The Liminal Space: a hoarders mansion that may or may not be a portal to somewhere else.
Synopsis: broke student Alex Lane joins a team clearing out Solace House, a Victorian mansion bequeathed to the university by a reclusive hoarder called Flayne. As the crew dives deeper into the bowels of the house, they uncover secrets about its previous owner and his obsession with a ritual that he believes would grant him access to another realm.
Liminal Spaces in Urban Environments
Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky
Genre: classic science fiction
Pagecount: 145 pages
The Liminal Space: a Russian exclusion-zone, resulting from the fallout of an apparent alien visitation, that has left the landscape filled with otherworldly artifacts and phenomena.
Synopsis: We follow a so-called Stalker; one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around.
The Haunting of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste
Genre: horror, magical realism
Pagecount: 246 pages
The Liminal Space: a neighbourhood-block turned ghosttown overnight.
Synopsis: 20 years ago, the suburban neighbourhood of Velkwood Street turned into a ghosttown overnight. Only three survivors walked out. Now, 20 years later, they return to Velkwood Street to confront the ghosts of their past.
Coup de Grace by Sofia Ajram
Genre: horror novella
Pagecount: 139 pages The Liminal Space: an infinitely looping Montreal subway system.
Synopsis: a man, intent on ending his life after a battle with depression, finds himself stranded in an inescapable and endlessly looping system of subway stations instead. The more he explores his strange new prison, the more he becomes convinced that he hasn’t been trapped there accidentally, and that he certainly isn’t alone down here.
Terrace Story by Hillary Leichter
Genre: magical realism
Pagecount: 208 pages
The Liminal Space: a beautiful terrace that only appears when a certain person is present.
Synopsis: Annie, Edward, and their young daughter, Rose, live in a cramped apartment. One night, without warning, they find a beautiful terrace hidden in their closet. It wasn't there before, and it seems to only appear when their friend Stephanie visits. But every extra bit of space has a hidden cost, and the terrace sets off a seismic chain of events, forever changing the shape of their tiny home, and the shape of the world.
Sunbirth by An Yu
Genre: magical realism
Pagecount: 320 pages
The Liminal Space: a remote desert town where the sun has been gradually disappearing from the sky.
Synopsis: a story that intertwines the mysterious events in the town of Five Poems Lake – stuck in a drawn out and inexplicable apocalypse for days now – with the personal lives of 2 sisters mourning the disappearance of their father 12 years ago.
One Leg on Earth by ‘Pemi Aguda
Genre: magical realism, contemporary
Pagecount: 240 pages
The Liminal Space: a Nigerian town under construction, caught between its own history and Western modernity.
Synopsis: A curse seems to haunt the women Nigerian city of Lagos, drawing them to walk into bodies of water. Against this background, young women Yosoye grapples with the major changes in her own life: her move to the city, her new job at an architectural firm and her recently found out pregnancy.
Liminal Nature
Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
Genre: horror, sci-fi
Pagecount: 195 pages
The Liminal Space: a mysterious stretch of nature, cut off from the rest of the world for decades, where nature behaves on its own terms and no human returns from.
Synopsis: Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades, following an undisclosed event. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization and turned it into a pristine yet uncanny Edenic landscape. 12 expeditions into Area X have all ended in tragedy; no survivors returned unharmed. We follow the all-female 13th expedition into Area X on a quest for answers.
Ultramarine by Mariette Navarro
Genre: literary novella
Pagecount:140 pages
The Liminal Space: the middle of the Atlantic ocean
Synopsis: The captain of a transatlantic freighter makes the impulsively decides to bring the ship to a standstill to allow her crew a swim in the open ocean. Shortly after, an uncanny dread creeps over the ship. A thick mist covers their route, there seems to be a mysterious extra crewmember among them, and one-by-one both crew and captain begin to feel more unmoored than they’ve ever had before.
The Willows by Algernon Blackwood
Genre: classic horror short-story/novella
Pagecount: 87 pages
The Liminal Space; a canoe trip down the Danube River.
Synopsis: Two friends are midway on a canoe trip down the Danube River when the environment around them – specifically the willows that line the river banks – suddenly take on an eerie quality.
Catfish Rolling by Clara Kumagai
Genre: Young Adult magical realism
Pagecount: 432 pages
The Liminal Space: a Japanese exclusion zone where, after a devastating earthquake, time itself became disrupted in its flow.
Synopsis: an earthquake so powerful it cracked time itself shook the lives of Sora, her father and their community alike. It destroyed Sora’s home and took her mother. Ever since, Sora and her father have been obsessively exploring the zones in secret, each with motives of their own. One seeking a scientific answer to the incomprehensible. The other seeking her mother, who went missing during the Shake, hoping to find her trapped in a different time-zone somewhere. But dwelling in the time-zones isn’t without danger, and when Sora’s dad travels too far, Sora must venture into uncharted territory to bring him back to now.
Green Fuse Burning by Tiffany Morris
Genre: (eco-)horror novella
Pagecount: 107 pages
The Liminal Space: a cabin in an isolated swampland where shades of green and Earth blur together, and seep into our protagonists mind.
Synopsis:A female artist in the depth of grieving the loss of her father, is offered a solo-stay as in a remote forest cabin, in order to paint in peace. Soon the edges of land, memory and reality begin to bleed together, and she discovers that in the swamp's decay the end of one life is sometimes the beginning of another.
Miscellaneous
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Genre: fantasy
Pagecount: 245 pages
The Liminal Space: an endless “house” of temple-like Greek architecture, statues, and ocean tides washing through the marbled halls.
Synopsis: Piranesi has lived a simple life of solace and isolation inside The House with with its numerous halls and statues, for as long as he can remember. He does not remember a “before” and cannot imagine an “after”. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person in these halls, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.
Wyrd and Other Derelictions by Adam L.G. Neville
Genre: horror short stories
Pagecount: 106 pages
The Liminal Space: a variety of abandoned settings, devoid of people, yet full of stories.
Synopsis: a unique style of horror-storytelling; Derelictions are weird tales that tell of aftermaths and of new and liminal places. Each features a location that tells the story of catastrophe, infernal visitations, or unearthly transformations. All without a single human presence on page…
The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher
Genre: horror
Pagecount: 341 pages
The Liminal Space: a hole in the wall in a museum of curiosities, that opens a portal to a realm seemingly outside of space and time.
Synopsis: a woman, newly divorced, broke, and on the verge of losing her house, moves in with her Uncle to help him maintain his Museum of Natural Wonders, Curiosities, and Taxidermy, in exchange for a rent-free stay. One day she discovers a hole in one of the backwalls that seemingly leads to an impossible in-between place. With her best friend Simon at her side, she sets out to investigate. A contemporary tale inspired by Algernon Blackwoods The Willows.
The Weathering by Artem Chapeye
Genre: speculative fiction, dystopian
Pagecount: 212 pages
The Liminal Space: a town at the edge of the Carpathian Mountains, suddenly devoid of people.
Synopsis: A young Ukrainian couple spends the summer in a remote cabin in the Carpathian Mountains, to disconnect from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Upon their return to civilization, they discover that a quiet apocalypse has taken place, erasing the majority of humanity from existence and leaving only small groups of survivors behind.
Lost in the Garden – Adam S. Leslie
Genre: fantasy horror
Pagecount: 456 pages
The Liminal Space: a feverdream version of an idyllic yet perilous English countryside, in which nature thrives in abundance, ghosts roam and summer lasts forever.
Synopsis: three teenage friends embark on a roadtrip through a distorted version of an English landscape, in order to visit the town of Almanby.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman
Genre: magical realism
Pagecount: 181 pages
The Liminal Space: a childhood home revisited, where the boundaries of reality and childhood fantasy/memory blur.
Synopsis: A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, the neighbourhood farm where he spent a remarkable summer when he was 7 remains. Exploring the farm and the pond behind it, he recalls the strange and surreal memories of that summer.
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